Bandon TR (Part 1)

[41eater]

I promised a trip report from my recent trip to Bandon Dunes. Here it is.

Let me start by addressing the travel. You pretty much have to fly to Portland and then catch a connecting flight to North Bend. The flight to North Bend is short, about 45 minutes. The resort is about 35 minutes from the airport by van or car.

Once you're at the resort, you should know that this is a golf resort, with an emphasis on golf. There really isn't anything else to do.

That said, the resort is first-rate. The owner (a guy named Mike Keiser) has really thought about how to make the experience a good one for people who are serious about golf. We stayed in the Grove cottages, which are 4-bedroom cottages surrounding a single great room. The service at the cottages was top-notch.

As far as weather, we saw all kinds in 48 hours, which I think is typical. I played a round in rain gear and I played a round in a golf shirt and shorts. The wind is always blowing, it's just a question of how hard.

Then there's the golf courses. I'll review each course separately -- I played Trails twice, the others each once. Let me say at the outset that these golf courses are all very challenging. While Bandon Dunes is a golf resort, this is not resort golf. If you can't break 100 at home, I can't imagine how playing these courses would be any kind of fun.

Bandon doesn't allow carts, so you're going to walk. I saw a lot of people who carried their own bag and I saw a lot of people who used pull carts. We took caddies -- if you're playing these courses for the first (or second or third) time, I would think a caddy is a must. There are just too many holes where you must have local knowledge to play the hole successfully.

Anyway, I give the entire experience an A. I went in with high expectations about the resort and the golf courses, and those expectations were met. I was literally smiling ear-to-ear as I played the first few holes, just because it was such a cool experience.

Next post -- in a couple days -- Bandon Trails.

[41eater]

(Even though my last post got no replies, I'm going to forge ahead. The current top post is about throwing the golf ball, so my guess is that no one will mind hearing about one of the country's great golf resorts.)

BT was my least favorite of the three courses. This isn't a disparaging comment at all. It's an awesome course with several very memorable holes. The course starts and ends in the dunes, but most of the course winds up and through a pine forest.

I was impressed with the back nine in particular. Ten and eleven are two very interesting par 4s, then twelve is a par 3 that plays all of 255 from the tee. Hitting driver into a par 3 is a blast. Thirteen and fifteen are both tough par 4s, and sixteen is a monster of a par 5 -- uphill, generally into the prevailing wind. Seventeen leaves the forest and back into the dunes -- just an unforgettable par 3. And eighteen is pretty cool as well, as you play to a green that is on a plateau up by the clubhouse.

I left off 14, a short 300 yard par 4. I can't decide on this hole. It's either pure evil or genius. A front pin placement on this hole is almost immune from any kind of attack. If you hit driver you are hitting to an area about as big as a car. Anything short, left, long, or right is dead. Lay up and you have an approach to the same area. I'd like to go back and hit about 100 tee shots and figure out where to attack this hole from.

Anywhere else, BT would be a premier, stand-alone course. Unfortunately, it suffers a bit from comparison to its older siblings, Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes. I'll talk about them next.

[bonds]

Good report so far, looking forward to the rest!

[Jeremy517]

Ditto

[tuq]

41eater,

After reading your OP a few days ago, I was very much looking forward to the next installment, and I'm sure many others feel the same.

By the way, I've posted these here before, but since you've listed holes and what not it's worth posting again in this thread:

Bandon Dunes main website (all courses).

Bandon Trails hole routing.

Pacific Dunes hole routing.

Bandon Dunes hole routing.

The website designer did an awesome job for them - all the holes are clickable for an up-close look and notes, and the scorecard is interesting to look at too (particularly the layout of holes on the Pacific Dunes course).

Interestingly, the consensus among friends of mine who have played there is that the original course, Bandon Dunes, is now their least favorite (and as you implied it's still probably in the top five courses they've ever played) and is edged out by the newest course, Bandon Trails, which is also the only course not on the water. It just seems they did a really nice job with that one.

Looking forward to your next post.

[ReDeYES88]

more please

[41eater]

We played BD first. There was a wonderful moment for me when I walked up past the clubhouse and the starter's shack. I saw the green grass, the fescue, the dunes, and the ocean in the distance. Beautiful. Then I saw two posts sitting on the ground just on the other side of the starter's shack. It took a second for it to sink in. This was the "tee box." There was no shaping like I had seen on 99.9% of the other courses I had played in my life, no carefully manicured teeing area. Just the two markers.

Over the first three holes I played pretty good golf shots, but the adjustment to links golf got me. I had to play a pitch shot out of foot-long fescue, I had to putt from off the green and from a tight lie up a steep slope to the pin, and I had to hit a tricky bump-and-run over a saddle and onto the green. My game was being pressured in places and in ways like it never had before. I have never enjoyed making three bogies more in my life.

I quickly learned that I wasn't sharp enough with my 56 or 60 degree wedges to make them worthwhile around these greens. I remember that on twelve I had missed the green left, and tried to flop it up the green to get it close. I missed by a few feet short, and my ball was then unplayable in the front of the pot bunker. The golf course gave me two choices -- hit something low and accept a 15-20 footer for par, or hit a perfect shot to get close.

Overall I found the course fairly open and forgiving from the tee. We had moderate winds -- probably very light for Bandon -- and the course was very playable. There are several holes along or near the ocean; we had a sunny day and the blue Pacific was spectacular.

A couple of holes stand out. Six is a par 3 back into the prevailing wind. Standing there with a hybrid in my hand, the cliffs on the left, and a left pin -- whoa. Sixteen's a short-ish par 4, and downwind. But the fairway is literally rent in half by a diaganol slash of cliff that jags in from the ocean. Get it up across the slash and you have a little flip to the green. Leave it below and you have a blind shot.

I'll talk about Pacific next, then compare/contrast the three courses. I can see how someone who plays all three regularly would come to prefer the Trails. Part of what makes PD and BD spectacular is the ocean -- playing alongside of it, seeing the cliffs and the beach, etc. But after your 20th or 200th loop, the ocean is just trouble on the left (or right).

By the way, I second the endorsement of the website, I looked at it extensively before the trip and it's really well-done. At the same time, of course you really can't get the full idea of what it's all about until you see it in person.

[tuq]

Great stuff.

[41eater]

If Trails is a first cousin to Bandon Dunes, then PD is BD's sister. Situated directly north of BD on the coast, PD is a similar seaside, links course with two primary differences. First, unlike BD, PD does not return to the clubhouse after 9 holes. Second, the holes at PD tend to play directly into or away from the prevailing summer wind. BD has several holes that tend to play a bit more across the wind.

We played PD in a pretty fierce afternoon wind. Iron shots into the wind were losing as much as 40-45 yards due to the wind. I hit an 8 iron (normal distance 145+) on 11 that ballooned a bit and flew all of 100 yards. Controlling your distance downwind was just as tricky; at one point I hit a little bump and run wedge that just kept bouncing and rolling (and rolling, and rolling).

A couple holes featured either blind tee shots or approaches. Not my favorite. I hit a couple of bunkers that were extremely punitive. I could advance the ball no more than 60 yards out of one, and had to take an unplayable from another. They seemed a bit more punitive than BD or BT. That's real Scottish links golf.

My favorite hole of all 3 courses was #13 on PD. A local photographer has a website that features several photographs from BD and PD. His photograph of #13 captures the beauty of the hole pretty well:

PD #13

With the ocean on your left, you must hit a big drive. The left side is preferred, or you'll have to come up and over the dunes on the right, which rise up on the right side to frame a beautiful green complex. The architect is quoted in the yardage guide saying something like any golfer would have "found" no. 13 when designing the golf course -- in any event, it's a beautiful hole. (And I made an easy par. Always makes remembering a hole better.)

The architect designed a back nine that is truly unique: par 35 with four (!) par 3s -- including back-to-back on 10 and 11 -- three par 5s, and only 2 par 4s. But after the back-to-back par 3s it doesn't seem weird. I was mostly concentrating on how to navigate the wind -- where can I hit this shot, what's the wind going to do to it, etc.

Finally, you could see from the northern-most parts of the course the beginning of the layout for the resort's 4th course, Old MacDonald. It appears that it will be a lot like BD and PD just based on where the land is situated, but you can't tell much yet.

I'll try to compare/contrast the three courses in a final post. I did tell one of the caddies on the last day that BD was my favorite of the three, but as I write these posts, I can remember more about the other two courses.

[41eater]

I've decided that I can't decide which course is my favorite. I walked away thinking that BD>PD>Trails, but now, almost two weeks later, the "memorability" of the courses is exactly the opposite. (To be fair, though, I played Trails twice.)

The bottom line is that all three of the courses -- which get consistently ranked in the top 10 or 20 of American courses "you can play" -- meet or exceed expectations. I've played golf for 25+ years, and while I've played a lot of courses, I hadn't played a lot of "great" courses before Bandon (Riviera CC and LA North were probably at the top of my pre-trip list). Seeing those three golf courses and what the architects were able to do has greatly enhanced my appreciation for golf course design.

What I realized is that it takes something scarce to make a great golf course: land. If your routing is constrained by the size and shape of the land you're given, then your golf course is going to suffer. At Bandon, the architects all appeared to have as much room as they needed. This is the result of building golf courses that are, in relative terms, in the middle of nowhere. So if you go, remember that the golf you're about to experience is only possible because you have to fly from Portland to North Bend, and then drive another 30-35 minutes.

Finally, the question I asked here before going is what kind of shot I needed to work on before I went. I ended up working really hard on lowering my ball flight to make it less vulnerable to the wind. This, I felt, would be the key. On the one hand, I was right, practicing those shots definitely helped. On the other hand, I still wasn't grooved enough to hit those shots consistently. A few sessions on the range and trying to pull off the low shot occasionally on the course in the months before I went was not enough.